The Future of Snapchat

Snapchat has proven to be a substantially successful product since it was launched in 2011. The application’s users send approximately 350 million photos per day. Although the company has already experienced tremendous success, CEO Evan Spiegel reported that Snapchat is only in its beginning phase. He ensures that there is much more ahead in the app’s future. Wearable technology is one of the next advancements Spiegel would like to pursue with Snapchat. Snapchat has already released an application called Snapchat Micro for the Samsung Galaxy Gear smart watch. This is only the beginning of the company’s plans to further explore applications for wearable technology.

Snapchat Plans to Grow

The company is constantly looking for ways to improve the gap between the physical and digital worlds. Faster and more efficient ways of sharing are two current focuses of the application’s improvement. One way the company plans on developing sharing is by examining how Snapchat can shift from using an inbox of snaps to using a social feed. This makes content sharing easier among groups of people. However, a challenge with such sharing would be ensuring that the content gets deleted after a certain period of time.

Snapchat Stories is a recent addition to the application’s features that allows for additional sharing. This new feature allows users to create a series of snaps that play chronologically. These snaps are available for friends to watch within a 24-hour period; they can also be watched multiple times. According to the Waikato Times, the reasoning behind the creation of this new feature is to preserve the concept of change. People are constantly changing, and their social media profiles should reflect that. In comparison to users’ static profiles like those on Facebook, users do not have to wonder whether they are fitting into their social media “persona,” nor do they have to spend extra time “grooming” their profiles. The Snapchat Stories feature provides a clean slate each day, allowing users to decide what to share on their daily accounts.

Competing with Other Social Media

In the social media world, Snapchat views itself as a significant, unique entity; the company is different from social media platforms such as Instagram, Vine, and Facebook. According to TechCrunch, the company does not currently view these platforms as direct competition. This stems from the disparate ways they share user content. While other social media platforms provide static content for their users, Spiegel proclaims strong opposition to static content sharing. He wants to see an expansion in the possibilities of impermanent media content.

Although the Snapchat CEO does not see other popular social media platforms as direct competition, their competitors might see the situation differently. The new Snapchat Stories could pose as opposition to other social media platforms because of its ability to essentially recreate a user profile each day. Users might see this as an advantage since it requires less upkeep, and creates less leeway for looking back and regretting posts. The company is standing firm in its desire to utilize impermanent content and will continue in this direction.

This article was provided by CJ Gordon, Computer Science with an interest in finance and business.